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Tag Archives: VK3/VG-034

The trip started out as a weekend of skiing for a friend’s birthday. What it turned into was a 13 day trip with 20 SOTA summit activations and 7 National Park activations. Here’s a potted picture-centric summary with future detailed reports still to come.

Path travelled on the trip to reach all the summits and parks – total distance 2718km

Sun 30 AugSOTA QSO Party day so I went to The Peak VK2/SM-068, set up the fly on the summit and activated all day until it got dark. Only a few short showers but it was windy all day. NVIS on 40m was poor mostly. Made some 20m contacts into EU including S2S with Mike 2E0YYY on Gun G/SP-013 – his only VK. Very happy with 41 S2S in a total of 83 contacts.

Tue 1 Sep
Rod hosed down my muddy car and then I was on my way to the ACT. Stopped in at Boboyan Range VK1/AC-044 Namadji NP VKFF-377 and made 32 contacts. Then headed for Tuggeranong Hill VK1/AC-038 but a flat tyre left no time for an activation. Drove into the city to the Ainslie Football Club for dinner with the VK1 SOTA guys – a very pleasant evening!

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Wed 2 Sep
Stopped by the tyre dealer for some new rubber. Very nice weather and headed to Mt Cowangerong VK2/ST-001 keeping clear of the weather radar tower. After the activation blew one of the new tyres leaving the site – Grrrrr! Headed to South Black Range VK2/ST-006Tallaganda NP VKFF-474 but wrong GPS guidance delayed arrival. Short activation and then to Mt Palerang VK2/ST-009 arriving 45 mins before dark. Did a very short activation and then walked down in the dark. Refreshed, refilled and then drove home via Braidwood. 19+8+4 contacts.

In a contact with Andrew VK1DA on Mt Delegate, my chaser score ticked past the 5000 point mark. It took 240 days or just under 8 months to accumulate the points. I’ve now received the wallpaper from the SOTA Awards Manager marking me as half a super-sloth. Thanks Andrew and all the activators for making those contacts possible!

After reaching this award level, I looked at my chaser points and realised there was a ratio of 100:1 between chaser and activator points. A bit shocked by that; I really need to put the effort into doing more activations!

Anyway, 9 days later in a contact with Ian VK1DI on Mt Gillamatong, I clocked up 1000 SOTA contacts. There are no official awards based on contact counts, but this milestone seemed noteworthy as well.